Nursing a turtle back to health

It was in miserable shape last July.

An injured Kemp's ridley sea turtle at in the Sea Life Facility at Texas A & M at Galveston's Ocean & Coastal Studies building Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in Galveston. The turtle had injuries ranging for a broken shell to punctured lung.

Photo By James Nielsen/Chronicle

An injured Kemp's ridley sea turtle at in the Sea Life Facility at Texas A & M at Galveston's Ocean & Coastal Studies building Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in Galveston. The turtle had injuries ranging for a broken shell to punctured lung.

Photo By James Nielsen/Chronicle

Texas A & M at Galveston, Sea Life Facility Director Dr. Kimberly Reich, Ph.D. holds a Green turtle carapace or shell in the Ocean & Coastal Studies building Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in Galveston. The carapace was confiscated after being brought into the country illegally.

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GALVESTON — The small Kemp's ridley turtle looked miserable. His carapace was cracked, his lungs were damaged, his front right flipper was gone, a chunk was missing from the edge of his shell and he had pneumonia.

The turtle was nursed back to health and transferred last week to the new $3 million Sea Life Facility at Texas A&M Galveston, where the public will have a rare opportunity to view an endangered species.

The lab — part of a $43 million, 110,000-square-foot Ocean and Coastal Studies building that opened last year — is one of only three on the Gulf Coast and is the most advanced, said Kimberly Reich, Marine Research Facility manager and head of the Sea Turtle and Fisheries Ecology Research Lab. Scientists at other universities are already queuing up for a space to conduct research at the lab, she said.

Meanwhile, the rescued turtle can be viewed through a glass window in the lobby near the Sea Life Facility, open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. It lives in a specially designed turtle tank with a constant current and a piece of plastic pipe that serves as a turtle house.

Reich said the university is in the process of transforming the bare lobby into a sea-life museum that will include numerous exhibits, including a large screen that will monitor sea creatures in 12 tanks in the state-of-the-art research lab.

Ben Higgins, sea turtle program manager at NOAA's Fort Crockett facility in Galveston, said the turtle is healthy enough to return to the wild but can't be released until the weather is warm enough. Transferring the turtle to Texas A&M frees tank space at the sea turtle facility for other injured turtles, Higgins said.

The NOAA sea turtle facility takes care of injured turtles found from Sabine Pass to the Brazos River. “It's like a 911 for sea turtles,” said Higgins, who took the turtle to Joe Flanagan, director of veterinary services at the Houston Zoo.

“He is at least two years old. Probably three or four,” said Flanagan, who receives three to four dozen injured turtles from NOAA each year.

Reich says the turtle is being fed squid and shrimp injected with nutrients and that eventually he will be given live food, such as blue crab, that he will have to catch to prepare him for release into the wild.